The Importance of Knowing Your Why, Here's Ours...
You may have noticed a subtle shift in Transfit's positioning. Whilst not earth shattering from a marketing perspective, the rationale behind it is a significant game changer for Transfit, and ultimately for our customer engagement, so I wanted to share a little of the journey that has led to this change.
Despite the IT industry collectively having been implementing commercial IT solutions for many, many decades, the cost and impact of failed or delayed IT projects continues to escalate.
One survey from Harvard Business Review calculates failure of IT initiatives costs the U.S. economy between $50 and $150 billion annually.
Another survey from McKinsey & Company in conjunction with the University of Oxford says 17% of IT projects go so badly, they threaten the very existence of the company.
These are staggering statistics, yet I doubt they will be particularly surprising to clients and industry providers alike. But why?
For the past 20 years, as the founder and C level executive of Readify, I had the privilege of working with many clients to solve their complex business problems or realise exciting new business opportunities, using Readify's bespoke software development services.
Being a businessman, not a software developer, I recognised early that it was rarely the technology that failed to deliver the benefits our clients sought. Rather, failed or delayed project delivery generally resulted from a misalignment of requirements between the stakeholders within the client businesses, and or how their requirements were expressed to the service providers.
That's not to say providers are never at fault in this equation, but quality providers recognise the risk of "poor problem definition" and make an extra effort to understand the issues we are solving, not just the technology we are implementing.
So why is IT success still so hit and miss?
When considering and researching Transfit, I was drawn to the enormous possibilities the Digital Transformation era represents for so many businesses, and was equally excitement at the prospect of helping clients on that journey. In fact, the name Transfit was formed from Transformational Intelligent Technologies.
However something didn't sit quite right with me about the "Digital Transformation" tagline, even as we hired consultants and began engaging customers. It was like the childhood game of hide and seek, where the clues describing your proximity to the target ranging from cold through hot. We were in the warm to hot range, but certainly not boiling. But what was missing?
Partly, I was put off by the over use of Digital Transformation which is being touted from photocopier suppliers through to BAU upgrades, little of which is genuinely transformational.
Then a series of seemingly unrelated coincidences occurred.
Sharing these concern with my colleague Andrew Phillips, he introduced me to Simon Sinek's book "Start With Why". It was then I realised neither Transfit, nor myself, actually knew our "Why".
I knew Transfit's What and How intimately, based on the last 20 years of experience and all the research I had done prior to launching the business. Yet I could not articulate our Why. Equally I couldn't articulate why I'm so drawn to the challenge of starting new businesses, beyond certifiable madness.
Despite this confusion, customers began engaging Transfit. But they weren't buying the holistic Digital Transformation services we campaigned on. Rather they were engaging our "problem solving" management services to help with recovering challenged projects, or implementing best practices to reduce risk in their own digital transformation planning. But why Transfit and why that part of our offering ahead of some of our leading edge Technical capabilities?
Deciding I needed to "Find our Why", I engaged Andrew Ford to facilitate a discovery workshop, where he quickly identified the disconnect between what I (and Transfit as an natural extension) was representing and what we actually and passionately believed in. And that came down to a one word change. Excellence.
By simply changing the term Digital Transformation to Digital Excellence, everything fell into place.
Firstly, the reason I start and grow my own businesses is because I am driven by the challenge of creating excellence within those businesses, even when time and money are scarce. I'm a passionate believer in doing the right thing, no matter what - in other words, Excellence.
Because of this, Excellence is at the centre of everything I do, and have always done, particularly when it comes to dealing with clients. I place a laser sharp priority on my client's success, as if it was my money being spent, hence my alarm at the horrendous waste statistics I shared earlier.
On reflection, it's no coincidence that Customer Success and Leadership and Learning are included in Transfit's core common commitments, which directly influences who we hire, what we offer, and how we deliver.
Given all that, it made immediate sense to adjust Transfit's alignment to being a Digital Excellence consultancy, where we focus on applying robust and disciplined frameworks and methodologies to drive success with our client’s most important and transformative IT initiatives and projects, rather than focus on the end projects in isolation.
Done properly, Digital Excellence addresses and includes every aspect and employee of our client's business, and prioritises culture change over technology implementations.
That's not to say we are all care and no responsibility. Quite the opposite. Our offerings include our own Digital Excellence and Delivery Excellence frameworks, Excellence Leadership support, and associated Platform and Solution implementations. In other words we can teach you to fish, fish with you, or do the fishing for you, or any combination the makes sense based on your relative digital maturity and capability.
I hope you found this explanation informative, and if you would like to discuss the benefits of a Digital Excellence culture within your organisation, please don't hesitate to get in contact.
Graeme